Lesson Info
30. Smart Sharpen
Lessons
Class Introduction
00:52 2Introducing Photoshop
02:37 3The Class Materials
01:36 4How To Open Files
01:42 5Using The Home Screen
02:35 6Exploring The Interface
03:30 7Getting Additional Help
01:36 8Understanding Workspaces
05:11Tools and The Options Bar
03:50 10Why You Should Use a Tablet
04:31 11Finding Hidden Tools
04:23 12How to See What You’re Working On
08:12 13Selecting Things
08:01 14More Selection Tools
12:25 15Testing the Magic Wand and Quick Selection Tools
07:25 16The History Palette – Undoing Things
05:24 17Resolution and Bit Depth
07:03 18Photoshop Preferences
01:31 19Menu and Item Shortcut Keys
02:39 20Non-Destructive Editing
02:57 21Working with Layers
12:19 22Groovy 3 Exercise
11:43 23Layer Effects and Styles
05:38 24Layer Masks – Karen on Beans
08:33 25Using Adjustment Layers
05:38 26Martian Karen
03:37 27Advanced Compositing Using Layers
08:43 28Non-Destructive Editing Techniques
05:22 29Understanding Smart Objects
07:28 30Smart Sharpen
06:42 31Understanding Histogram
06:24 32Adjusting Curves
03:48 33The Healing Brush Tools
10:26 34The Clone Stamp Tool
07:47 35The Burn and Dodge Tools
05:55 36Understanding RAW Files
01:44 37Adobe Camera Raw
04:18 38XMP Sidecar Files
02:14 39Camera Raw: Edit
12:24 40Camera Raw: Crop & Rotate
03:13 41Camera Raw: Spot Removal
04:56 42Camera Raw: Adjustment Brush
08:17 43Camera Raw: Graduated Filter
05:40 44Camera Raw: Radial Filter
05:11 45Camera Raw: Red-Eye Removal
02:04 46Camera Raw: Snapshots and Presets
09:39 47Neural Filters
10:09 48Portrait Retouching Session
36:53 49Scenic Retouching Session
11:25Lesson Info
Smart Sharpen
let's talk about sharpening. What is it? Well, sharpening is a technique that's used in photography um to make sure that images pop off the screen or off a print. And what it's doing is it's looking in the image and the very, very small details at a pixel level. And it looks for boundaries where we have some contrast maybe where hair hits the background. So we have a dark area and a white area or maybe where the eye hits the skin that border. So any border where there's some contrast, what it does is it takes the darks that makes them darker. It makes the lights lighter. And so it appears to our eye that the image is sharper. So how do we do this in practical terms? Well, let's hop into Photoshop and then what we're gonna do is click on open, we're gonna go to our class materials, we're gonna go down here and choose sandy dot jpeg and open this file. Now this file has all kinds of issues with contrast and color and all kinds of things and we can fix that in a later episode. But what we...
want to do now is we want to sharpen this image. So the first thing we want to do is go to the background layer, click on the lock to convert that to a normal layer. Now the other thing we want to do when we're sharpening things. Normally we do that at the very last the very last thing you do to an image because you want to make sure you get all of the details and the resolution, everything set first. Sharpening is generally done at the very last. We also want to do sharpening at 100% zoom in so we can see exactly what's happening. You can't really see this if you're not at 100%. So the very first thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to click on my magnifying glass and say 100%. I want to see this at 100%. And then I want to go in here and I want to look at Sandy's eyes and her eyelashes and so make sure you do this on your own computer because these fine details generally don't translate very well to video. So you might not see what I'm doing in the video that you're watching right now. Do this on your own computer on your own screen at home and you'll see how this really pops and the difference that this makes. Okay, so now that we have this image at 100%, what we're going to do is we're going to go to filter sharpen and you can see that there's all kinds of different sharpens here. So smart sharpen is fantastic because it's generally the best of these sharpens to use and so on. Sharp mask used to be the favorite but smart sharpen is the newest. So we're going to click on that and then this is going to bring up a new dialogue box. Now notice this dialog box has a preview window and it by default opens at 100% we want that because we want to be able to see what's going on in our image at 100%. So I'm gonna put her eye in this window so you can see the eye right here. If I unclipped preview, what's going to happen is I will see in this window what's happening? But I won't see in the big window, what's happening? I'd like to see what's happening in the big window. And so I'm gonna click free view now. What you can do here is you can go in and choose a preset. So that is something that has been created by you to be used for later. And so I haven't saved any presets, I haven't done any of these because generally I like to do this per image so I'm gonna keep this at custom. The first little slider you see here is the amount. How much sharpening do you want. So how much contrast you want to put between those little pixels there. So let me over sharpened. So I'm gonna do this way over here at 500%. And what you'll see is on your screen, you'll see that you start getting some halos and things around areas you don't want that, you don't want to see this to be too sharp and so you'll get all kinds of weirdness if you over sharpen something and we can really see that if we change the radius the radius. Remember we're changing the contrast. We're taking the dark areas, making them darker, making the light areas, making it a little bit lighter. But how far out from that boundary should we go? That's the radius. And so if I take this radius from one pixel, so we're just taking just this pixel in this pixel, we're changing them. If I take that to let's say 20 pixels, wow. Now you're really seeing some nastiness. And so you can see here when we look at the eyebrows and the stuff that the eyebrows are very very dark and then everything around the eyebrows are very very light because we increased the radius. That's too much. This makes her look like she's got some very bad skin damage from the sun. So we can take this radius down to maybe 0.9 pixels. Generally speaking, you're gonna be working in the range of 1 to 2 or maybe three pixels even at 2.3 pixels. See how her skin looks all shiny, it looks like she's got a bright light. That's too much. You need to take that down. We need to take it down a little bit more, take it down a little bit more. Let's take it down to maybe one pixel. That's a good area and then the amount we can take that down to something that's more reasonable. Maybe 100% or 70%, something like that until you see this really popping but not to a point where you see noticeable effects of that contrast change. That's how you decide Are you seeing those halos? Are you seeing those big shadows and things popping up? If so take the radius down or take the percentage down. You need to play with this based on the image that you're working on Depending on the resolution of the image, you're gonna add more or less sharpening and the radius is gonna be a little bit more or a little bit less. And so you have to have this at 100% on your computer screen. Take a good look at it and be very discerning must be really picky about that and see exactly if it's exactly what you want. You can turn that preview on and off to see the changes so that after on my screen it's really noticeable. You might not see that on the video, do this at home and you'll see for yourself that this sharpening is really, really awesome. Now, smart sharpening is a great way to sharpen images. It's something that we use all the time. Historically. It's the best way to do it. But there are better ways to do sharpening using adobe camera raw but we're gonna learn all about adobe camera raw and the way that you can sharpen images in that tool a little bit later on in our class
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Katie
Mark did a great job at explaining things and going over them multiple times throughout the lessons. My only issue was that sometimes it went a little faster than I could keep up and I needed to rewind it a bit and start again. But from someone who has never worked in photoshop before I 100% recommend this class to anyone trying to learn.
Terri Schwartz
Student Work
Related Classes
Adobe Photoshop